From Brian Moore’s earliest and best known novel, ‘The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne,’ to his last, ‘The Magician’s Wife,’ the mystery of belief has haunted his best fiction.
John B. Breslin
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
From 1994: A review of John Cheever’s ‘Thirteen Uncollected Stories’
A posthumous collection of some of John Cheever’s early stories shows his development as a writer.
Posted inVantage Point
From the archives: ‘America’ remembers Shusaku Endo
Hailed by Graham Greene, Endo was one of the most important Christian novelists of the 20th century.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
From These Ashes
Postapocalyptic novels were once popular back in the last millennium when we all worried about the Bomb and what it might do to us.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Everyday Renewals
I carried a copy of Seamus Heaney rsquo s latest collection District and Circle with me to Europe this summer reading it on buses and trains and at outdoor restaurants in London This was the rainless summer when London hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time in recorded history happily
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Meeting His Past
I first met John McGahern in the 1990 rsquo s when I was teaching a summer course in contemporary Irish literature for Georgetown students at Trinity College in Dublin where John was then residing He was one of the people I was hoping to entice to come to my class and when I asked him he agreed
Posted inCulture
How to/Not to Novelize Jesus
Writing a novel based on the Gospels is a tricky business, not only because the Gospels themselves are such special documents, but because the two literary forms have very different purposes. Both are narratives, of course, but the novel is, historically speaking, a relatively recent phenomenon and
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
A Grim World
If Thomas O rsquo Malley rsquo s first book In the Province of Saints is anything to judge by he has a real future ahead of him as a novelist The story takes place in Ireland more specifically in the southern part between 1976 and 1981 But geography alas does not spare his characters from
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
No Ordinary Day
Saturday brings Ian McEwan rsquo s novel output to a neat dozen with one exception most of them have tended toward brevity rather than length I have read almost all of them and consider myself a fan Ironically McEwan received the Booker Prize for Amsterdam a short novel of intrigue while his
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
The Shape of Things to Come
It was inevitable the academy has struck back After the early favorable reviews and popular success of Professor Stephen Greenblatt rsquo s ldquo biography rdquo of William Shakespeare his scholarly colleagues have now weighed in to remind him that such success comes at a price The New York Ti